


you left your mark on me

by yellowumbrellas



Category: Saturday Night Live RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2013-12-16
Packaged: 2018-01-04 19:30:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1084866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yellowumbrellas/pseuds/yellowumbrellas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>September 2012</p>
            </blockquote>





	you left your mark on me

**Author's Note:**

> i don't even know anymore ok i'm trash. 
> 
> tRASH.

When she calls him, he picks up on the third ring. The sound of the city is in the background, police sirens wailing and he can hear her breathe in the Fall air. 

"Hello?"

"Hey, Meyers."

"Amy?" He asks, and hears her scoff under her breath. 

"Do you really not have called ID? It's 2001." He smiles but something in her voice is forced and disingenuous. 

He ignored her. "Are you in town? What's up?"

"Uhh-" she trails off, clears her throat, brings it back. "Yeah. I am. Are you busy right now?"

\--

She knocks twice and curls her arms around her midsection, squinting at the fluorescence above and around her. He opens the door with a smile, greets her with a hand on her bicep and a kiss to her cheek. 

"Hey," she says again, her voice low as she steps inside, avoiding his gaze. 

"Everything okay?" Seth asks, shutting his apartment door and watching her cautiously. Amy looks around her like she's never seen his place before, eyes scanning his living room, an episode of the Daily Show muted on his tv, the way the blankets are lying in a heap on the armrest. 

She feels a tightness in her throat but turns back to him, smiling listlessly. She watches his face drop, turn serious. He takes a step closer to her and she feels tears sting and blur her vision. 

"Hey," Seth says gently, his hands (on what he hopes is neutral ground) resting on her arms. Amy looks up at him, feels her cheeks burn and she tries to laugh at herself but it comes out insincere and self-deprecating. "What's going on? Sit down," Seth backs her towards the couch and she sits on the edge of the seat, feet flat on the floor with her elbows on her knees and face in her hands. 

Seth runs to his kitchen, pours her a cup of coffee and returns to her side. He runs his hand gently along the column of her spine, hands her the mug and she looks at him searchingly. 

"So um," she clears her throat, runs her fingers along the bottom of the mug. "We broke up. For real. For good." Seth's eyes drop to her hands, her fingers bare of all things ornamental or nuptial. 

"Amy..." Seth says gently and she smiles ruefully. "I'm sorry," and he suddenly feels so awkwardly out of place that he doesn't know what to do to help her. 

"It's okay," she says and it sounds like she means it. "It's not like it was straight out of left field or anything like that. We both kind of knew it was coming." 

"Do you wanna talk about it?" Amy turns her head, takes in his concerned gaze. 

"I don't know yet." He nods and she draws her knees to her chest, placing her coffee mug back on the table and stares at the tv blankly. She bites the inside of her lip, feels him look at her. "I kind of just... want to not think about it for a while." 

"That's fine." She turns and smiles at him and he mumbles a "come here," so she moves over, curls up against him and rests her head on his chest, an arm wrapping around this stomach. She feels tired and worn down, her heart heavy and her resolve crumbling. Seth wraps his arm around her shoulder, pulls the blanket over them and kisses her head gently. She hums softly and he turned the volume back on on the tv. 

Being with him was so simple and easy that even after the years that had separated them, the people they had become outside of one another, outside of 8H and all their ties to one another, she could still come back to him, come back to her New York self, her New York life, and be put at ease. Go back to what she had known for so long, to what was steady, constant, familiar. 

He was that steadiness, that consistence, that familiarity. He was so many memories to her, every person she met, experience she had within these city limits, every break up, every relationship, every moment, culminated for her in him. So when he wraps his arms around her at 3AM after having been apart for the better part of three years, she feels tears sting at her eyes again because she knew he was always there. Whenever she felt lost she could come back and remember where she came from. She could slip into her old self and feel like she belonged again. 

Amy closed her eyes, listened to the sound of Seth's breathing, the voice of an MLB announcer quiet through the speakers, the gentle hum of the dishwasher and felt simple. She felt steady and even and put together. Seth's fingers stroked her arm absently and she felt his head come down to rest against hers. Privately, she smiled, opening her eyes just for a moment to look at her surroundings. 

His apartment was exactly like she remembered it. His photos hadn't been updated nor the furniture rearranged. He never got a bigger place after his step up to head writer or even changed the curtains on his bay window. Something about that lifted her heart into her throat, sent slow chills through her skin. It was like after she left, their friendship, their relationship, their partnership, whatever name tag you wanted to hang on them, everything just paused and when she returned, it was like picking up right back where they left off. No messy preamble or drawn out prologue.

"You okay?" Seth's thumb stroked her arm gentle and protective. 

Amy breathed in deep through her nose for a beat, bit her lip. "Yeah," she said but it felt heavy on her tongue, looked forced when it was out in the open. "Or if I'm not, I will be." She tacked it on to the end for the sake of honesty. 

"Are you sleeping over?" Seth mumbled into her hair after a thick silence. 

"Is that an invitation?" Amy asked, but her voice was tired and she wasn't sure she was up for their routine banter. And maybe he realized that. Maybe he saw the look in her eyes, felt that same ache she had in her chest and understood. Maybe he just knew her in ways that others hadn't, others wouldn't. 

"Come on," He said gently, kissing her forehead softly before slipping out from underneath her. He grabbed her hand, linked their fingers and stroked her index gently with this thumb, guiding her to his room. 

"Do you want to borrow a shirt?" 

"Sure," she answered, running her fingers through her bangs. "What are my options?"

"Your choices are threadbare Save Ferris t-shirt, threadbare Marvel logo t-shirt, or slightly less threadbare plain grey t-shirt." Amy smiled and laughed gently. She came up to meet him at his dresser drawer, looping her arm through his and leaning against his bicep. 

"How do you expect me to choose just one?" She said and he rolled his eyes, handing her the grey one. She pulled it over her head and slipped out of her jeans so she was left in his t-shirt and her underwear. "You know," Amy said, looking into the drawer and staring at his wealth of generic wardrobe choices. "You dress like you've made minimum wage for the past 20 years."

"Rude," he replied. 

"What's that saying?" She said. "'Dress for the job you want, not the job you have'?" 

And there it was, there was that banter she consciously decided against, but fell into naturally and unwittingly. 

Seth rolled his eyes. "Shut up, Poehler. The first day I met you, you were wearing a pair of stonewashed skinny jeans and an I Heart NY hoodie." 

"Why do you even remember that? Fucking stalker." Seth stepped closer to her and grinned. 

"I remembered because it was too horrible to forget."

"Stop bullying me," she punched him in the arm and he wrapped his arms around her waist. "I'm in a very fragile place right now." She said it on a laugh, light and playful but they both knew that part of her really meant it. Part of her really meant hey, slow down, be cautious. I'm hurt, please don't make this worse. 

That was her problem with Seth: being with him was like pushing on a bruise, a kind of pain you had to feel more than once to really register. You could see the mark, knew the evidence was right there, knew that hey, this hurt you once, can't you tell? But you still had to try it again, had to reactivate the nerves remember anything had been there. 

"I'm sorry," and he said it honestly. A hand cupped her cheek, tilted her chin up to see him. "I know you are," and he meant it and it hurt because she wished she had seen it all coming sooner. 

She took a deep breath and rested her hand on top of the one against her face. Seth tucked part of her hair behind her ear, kissed her temple softly and looked at her with more love and admiration, more honesty and genuineness than she had ever felt from anyone else in recent memory. Their hands dropped and she held his fingers. 

"I think..." She felt her throat tighten again and he must had heard it in her voice because his thumb started to stroke her hip gently and assuringly. "I think somewhere along the line we stopped liking each other. It was like we loved each other but we stopped being friends. Or--" she paused, breathed a shaky sigh, squeezed her eyes shut tight before continuing. "It was like we liked each other but we stopped loving each other. And I-" speaking was starting to hurt, like her words were too big and they were trying to push themselves out of her narrowing windpipe. Seth just listened, stayed patient, let her breathe. "I can't decide which is worse." 

"Aims..." Seth said, before she choked out a cry and he gathered her up into his chest. She sobbed and struggled to regain her breath and he could feel his heart bursting in his chest. 

She fisted his shirt into her hands, felt his solid chest below her fingers and he stroked her hair with one hand, the other firm on her back, keeping her held against himself. He hushed her gently, but tread cautiously, knowing that she could build her walls back up as quickly and seamlessly as she could tear them down. 

"Come here," Seth said softly and he led her towards his bed. "Come lay down." 

She sat on the edge of the bed for a beat, her back away from him while she steadied her breathing. When she turned back he was looking at her somewhat expectantly, poised like he was ready to run back over to her at a moment's notice. 

Amy wiped at her cheeks before she swung her legs up onto the mattress and curled up under Seth's sheets. 

"Sorry," she mumbled because she felt like she should say it. He just shook his head at her. 

"Never apologize to me," he said seriously and she nodded, but something in it made her cheeks flush and her pulse race. "Never." He said again. 

"Okay," she said and laughed softly. Seth slipped under the sheets beside her, rested his hand against her neck and jaw, his thumb stroking her cheekbone while his other fingers rested gently against her pulse. 

"I miss you," she said suddenly. She opened her mouth again to try and take it back but didn't have anything else to say. 

Seth smiled at her, a sad, slow kind of grin that didn't reach his eyes. 

"I miss you too, Amy," but he said it too gently, too soft and too honest; it make her heart clench painfully in her chest and she looked at him differently for a second. For a second, she saw someone she could love, someone she could want to really be with. For a second, she saw what she knew he saw in her. 

She expected him to kiss her deeply, press her into the mattress and prove his word but he didn't. He just looked at her so intently that it made her feel strange in her own skin. 

"Get some sleep, Poehler," Seth said instead, kissing her lips once and lingering. She moved closer to him, tucked her head into his neck and breathed deep. He smelled like aftershave and cologne and he reminded her of coffee after a long day, of a warm house after a evening in the cold, of strong hands clutching a trembling body, of every song she knew, of every long night spent in his company. He reminded her of home. 

She slept sound but knew that the next day would be hard. It would anxious and awkward. It would be elbows bumping in his kitchen and changing back into last night's clothes. It would be dodging gazes and avoiding goodbyes. It would be long and drawn out and she would be desperate for it to finish but never want it to end. It would be him wanting to call her just like he did every week, just like she did on restless Tuesday nights when she wished she could be back in New York. It would be cold and all too much and it would be worth every second. It would be worth everything that led up to her getting there. It would be worth missing him and resenting him and loving him. It would be worth it.


End file.
